


The Belle of the Ball

by XzadionOmega



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Incest, One-Sided Attraction, Skin As Leather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-22 14:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9610796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XzadionOmega/pseuds/XzadionOmega
Summary: Ruben searches for Laura during a ball. (Non-canon compliant.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been banging around in my head since Summer. I see Ruben being older in this fic. Call him 15 and Laura 17, if ages particularly matter.

Laura was an absolute vision on the dance floor, in Ruben’s opinion. The sight of her was a rush of adrenaline to his system. Her grace was unparalleled as she moved around the floor. Even the most nimble-footed dance partner looked like a graceless clod by comparison. It wasn’t just her dancing that made her stand out; it was her dress. The season’s color was lilac, apparently. Nearly all the women wore some variation on purple. Not Laura. Not his Laura. Red had been Laura’s color since she had been given the agency to choose her clothes. When it was out of season, as it was in that particular cool summer night, it made Laura easy to track. 

Ruben stared from the back wall of the ballroom. He was seeking her out, searching a garden of lavender and foxgloves for a single amyrillis blossom. His search was proving fruitless so far, but he wasn’t about to panic just yet. She could have gone anywhere in the manor: the powder room, but she had been gone too long for that; the library, but she wasn’t the type to spend a party sequestered away like he was; the gardens, but who would she go with? 

A dark thought overtook Ruben. She could be pinned against a wall by some handsome, brutish, nameless merchant’s son. Ruben tried to banish the thoughts from his mind, striving to replace the cortisol flood in his mind was something more neutral. Yet, each time his eyes traced the dance floor, seeking scarlet among violet, the idea came back stronger. 

She would never allow it, he told himself. 

All the more horrible, his mind whispered back. 

As Ruben straightened, intent on stalking through the manor and finding her, two hands cupped over his eyes. 

Soft, warm lips tickled his ear. “Guess who?” 

“Laura,” he breathed. 

“Laura,” she chirped. The hands withdrew as Laura looped around him. Laura’s eyes roamed over Ruben’s features fluidly. There was a lurid blush over her pale face. Ruben was about to assume the worst-- that she had just extricated herself from the arms of some farmer’s son with too much muscle and not enough class-- but he caught himself as he saw the empty wine glass she held between her fingers. 

“How many of those have you had?” 

She didn’t respond. Instead her perfect mouth pursed as she held back her mirth. She laid her head on Ruben’s shoulder and shook with laughter. Ruben kept his back straight, kept his gaze straight ahead. Across the room, their father was motioning for him to take Laura upstairs. Ernesto Victoriano’s eyes held anger, masking a fear of disgrace in front of the other affluent families. 

Ruben normally loved the wreak havoc on his father’s night, usually through engaging in an experiment or discussing them with guests. Unfortunately, there were no experiments that he could discreetly conduct that night and every other person at that party could never wrap their heads around his work. Ruben nodded to his father, vowing to kill the man’s attempts to save face another night, and took Laura by the shoulders. He gently lifted her head off his shoulders and kept that touch as he led her out of the room. 

“Let’s get you upstairs.” Laura’s giggles reached a crescendo as he took her into the foyer. When her laughter didn’t cease, even as they ascended the stairs, Ruben asked “Just what is so funny?” 

“Go upstairs,” she squeaked as Ruben pushed open the hallway door. “That’s just what Robert asked to do.” Ruben’s blood turned to fire, then ice in the space of an instant, but he kept his silence. Robert Sunderland, the son of a journalist, who lived two fields over “I told him no.” Laura pouted, but her pout melted into a grin. “And now you’re taking me upstairs.” 

A wry smile came to Ruben’s face. “So I am.” 

Laura hummed happily. “Taking me to my room.” 

Ruben’s blood began simmering again, but for an entirely different reason. “Taking you to your room,” he echoed. Still half-holding her up, Ruben opened the cumbersome bedroom door. Laura staggered inside and clung to her bedpost like it was a companion that had told her a joke. Ruben debated with closing the door. On one hand, they were family and it was perfectly innocuous. On the other hand, they were still of opposite sexes. People could still talk. 

Let them talk, he decided. Ruben closed the door with a loud click.

“Ruben,” Laura whimpered. “Can you get Anna up here to help with my dress?” 

“I think she’s asleep,” he told her. It was a half-truth; Laura’s maid likely was asleep, but Ruben could easily wake her. 

“Rats! You help me then.” Laura turned her back and pulled her hair up. She exposed the long, pale column of her neck and the line of gleaming buttons down her back. Ruben’s eyes went wide. She can’t know, he reasoned. There’s no way that she knows. Not because she wasn’t clever enough to put it together, but because he had been so careful. No incriminating words had been written, no damning statements had been spoken, he had never-- 

“Ruben?” 

He swallowed thickly. He crossed the distance and started unbuttoning. Halfway down her back, Ruben saw more skin than he should have. “You’re not wearing undergarments,” he said, feeling as dumbstruck as he had when he opened his first subject’s skull. 

“Don’t tell Mama.” 

In his mind, Laura’s bare back had always been ivory smooth, without a single mark. In truth, there were a few small moles dotting her back and a pale scattering of freckles on her shoulders. Feeling half-drunk himself, Ruben finished unbuttoning her dress. Laura shimmied her arms out of their sleeves, and the dress fell away, a red husk that left Laura’s pale, soft skin on display in the candlelight. 

“Thank you,” she moaned, stepping around the discarded dress. “I can get myself ready from here.” Ruben’s shaking hands still hadn’t moved from the open air where Laura’s hips had been a few moments before. “Ruben?” 

“Does Sunderland know that you were bare under there?” 

“Probably,” she said blithely. “I don’t know.” 

“Did he touch you?” 

“Ruben!” 

“Did he?!”

Crossing her arms in front of her chest, Laura whirled around. Her face betrayed her, exposing wide-eyed hurt. “No, I didn’t let him!” 

“Good!” Ruben shouted back. After a moment, he collected himself. Ruben smoothed his hair back. “Good.” 

“What do you care anyway?” 

No one can touch you, Ruben thought. No one but me. 

“I don’t want your reputation damaged.” Ruben spotted a dressing robe resting on an armchair. He snatched the robe up and draped it over her shoulders. “More than it already has been by your being a lush,” he added. 

For a moment, Laura looked as if she was ready to strike him. Instead she pulled the robe tighter around her shoulders and pressed a kiss to Ruben’s cheek. His skin burned where she had touched it. “You’re sweet,” she told him, “But I can take care of myself.” 

“Perhaps so,” he told her, returning the chaste kiss. “But that won’t stop me from trying.” 

“I love you,” Laura slurred, throwing herself onto the bed and cuddling up to her pillow like a cat. “I love you, Ruben.” 

Ruben excused himself, closing the door behind him firmly. His thoughts were a swirling blur that dissolved into a hazy fondness for his sister.

Halfway down the stairs, Ruben bumped into another man heading up them. Tall, powerfully built, topped with sandy blond hair. A walking amalgamation of recessive coloration and symmetrical features, designed to attract the feminine gaze. Robert Sunderland. “Good to see you, Ruben,” came the man’s jovial response. 

“Robert,” Ruben greeted, absently. Two steps later, Ruben turned around to follow him. “Robert, I was just looking for you.” 

“Were you, now? I was after your sister. She slipped away from me.” Robert gave the stairs a dashing smirk. The smarmy bastard. “You know the feeling, I’m sure, Ruben.” 

“Mmm. Walk with me first.” Ruben began walking towards the library. Towards his laboratory. Robert followed with curious steps. “I’m working on a new project, and I was hoping to get your take on it. Another intellectual’s eye.” 

“Happy to provide for you.” Robert’s eyes wandered over the bookshelf of the library while Ruben scoffed. Understanding the inner workings of a print press hardly made the man an intellectual. Even now, he gazed in awe at the books, perhaps having never seen so many. “Maybe then we’ll go see Laura together.” 

Ruben took the letter opener off the desk as he guided Robert around a table. “Maybe we will.” 

//

Laura preferred to be well-versed in literature. While painting had always been her mother’s choice of hobby, Laura liked books. She could spend hours, enthralled in poetry and novels. The books also helped inspire Laura’s own writing hobby, and she spent hours in the library, scribbling away. Her choice of activity had the added benefit of keeping her close to Ruben while he did his own work. 

“Surprise.” 

Laura raised her eyes to her brother’s smirking face. She picked the book up off her desk, flipped through it, and only found blank, white paper. “What’s this?”

“It’s a journal,” Ruben answered. He rolled his shoulders back. “You’re always saying that I should try new hobbies, so I tried binding a book.” 

“It’s lovely, Ruben. Thank you!” Laura ran her fingers down the binding (surgically precise stitching, as to be expected), and over the cover. Laura rubbed the leather of the cover. It was peculiarly soft and smooth. “What sort of leather is this?” 

“I had it imported specially. Robert helped me get it before he disappeared.” 

Laura frowned. Her last memory of Robert was a drunken fumble before she dashed away back to the party. Three days later, there was a search party going all over town looking for him. Even as Laura turned the pages of her new journal over, she felt guilt and melancholy. “Poor man. This was probably his last work.” 

Ruben’s shoulders shook, and it hurt Laura to see it. Ruben was so wracked with grief, the poor thing, as he ascended the library stairs. “I would imagine so.”


End file.
